DANBURY -- On a cool February evening about 18 months ago, thousands of area residents descended on City Hall, chanting "Stop 287," the program that allows local police departments to partner with federal immigration agents.

Neighboring streets were closed, city police officers were out in force, and a city stood divided.

Despite the controversy surrounding the measure, the city's Common Council voted 19-2 in favor of applying for the program.

This week, with much less fanfare, city officials announced the application had been approved and the agreement could be put into place within the next several weeks.

Council member Joseph Cavo was the first city official to bring the idea forward to his fellow Republicans, in October 2007. Other officials quickly signed onto the idea, and within months the Common Council acted on the measure.

"As council members, we have a duty to provide for the safety and security of our residents," Cavo said this week. "If we didn't do something like this, we would be derelict in our duties."

While some residents welcomed the move, others were concerned the partnership with federal officials, which allows selected local police officers to enforce immigration law, would lead to witch hunts and large-scale roundups of illegal immigrants, similar to those that occurred in the city in years prior.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, assisted by local police, conducted raids in 2006 on local apartments and Kennedy Park, where day laborers were known to congregate.

Council member Paul Rotello, one of two members of the board who voted against the partnership in February 2008, said officials had yet to review a memorandum of agreement that would outline how the program would work.

"Nobody had seen an agreement," he said. "I didn't want to commit the voters to a contract we didn't completely understand."

The application, however, was submitted, and the paperwork sat in limbo for months as the nation became embroiled in an historic presidential election.

The report said ICE lacked the controls needed to manage the program, and the agreements in place were so broad they allowed partner agencies to stray from the goal of catching illegal aliens involved in criminal activity, such as money laundering and human trafficking.

"As a result, some participating agencies are using their 287(g) authority to process for removal aliens who have committed minor crimes, such as carrying an open container of alcohol," the report said.

The report also stressed, however, that "removing aliens who have committed violent crimes is of great importance to the safety of the community at large."

In July, officials with the Department of Homeland Security released a new memorandum of agreement for the program they said is more standardized and instructs partner agencies to focus only on major crimes.

More than one dozen applications to the program that have been in limbo, including Danbury's, were approved shortly after the new agreement was released.

The new agreement says partnering law enforcement agencies are required to pursue to completion all criminal charges that caused the illegal immigrant to be taken into custody.

The agreement also says its purpose is to "enhance the safety and security of communities by focusing resources on identifying and processing for removal, criminal aliens who pose a threat to public safety or danger to the community."

The agreement outlines three levels of crimes in the agreement. Those include major drug offenses, rape, robbery, kidnapping, murder; minor drug offenses and property offenses such as burglary, robbery and money laundering; and "criminal aliens who have been convicted of or arrested for other offenses."

Some, however, argue that while officials say the program is more focused, that remains to be seen. Others say the new agreement doesn't go far enough.

"In theory, all the changes are good," said local immigrant attorney Michael Boyle. "It will be interesting to see how it works out. It's hard to say that it's a bad thing to find serious criminals -- nobody is against that.

"But if it gets to the point that anyone who is arrested is screened for their immigration status and turned over to ICE, that could create a level of fear, and that would be counterproductive," Boyle said.

Elise Marciano, president of the Danbury-based U.S. Citizens for Immigrant and Law Enforcement, said recently she doesn't like that the new agreement excludes minor offenses.

"People here illegally are breaking our laws and taking jobs away from Americans," she said. "We have to utilize our local police force to help the federal government get out of this mess."